by Reese Bentzinger 1:19, I’m watching the scenein Spirited Away where a creature with a bike in his back, decay on his breath, crawls to the bathhouse he’s got no name and no eyes, just two hollow pits begging for a bath but they won’t let him in there’s no way for him to cry, but I swear I…
18 – Innerlijk Zelfportret by Menke Biewenga I stare restlessly at the pink floor lamp beside my bed. Sometime before tomorrow, I am supposed to create “een innerlijk zelfportret”—an inner self-portrait. Why do Social Work students have to practice everything they learn on themselves first? I suppose this is one…
by Kashawn Taylor no longer can i surviveon bitter caffeine and self-hatred toppedwith old-fashioned determination sprinkleskeenly aware that my eyes lie, that whati see is / not mewhat I see is not me but i can’t helpthat sometimes eating’s a chore& i’d rather do anythingother than masticate and swallowanything else…
by Jarek Jarvis Morning—gold light saunters through the window— I wake in my old room, where the walls, once sunburst orange, lit my bed ablaze each dawn. I rose bathed in day’s nascent flame. Not a gasp of spark lingers to rouse me. The weather report beats against my door. Dishes chatter in the kitchen….
by Lyz Mancini The man was nodding out, one unlaced sneaker caught at an angle on the frame of a beat-up Chevy Camry, its door pushed wide on its hinges like a starving mouth. His eyes widened as he suddenly pitched forward, clutching a shabby blue worker’s hat to his…
by Katie Kenney At the doctor’s office the carpet cloudy,matching magazines so melancholy with weepy celebrity stories, watery wallsfor wild vines reaching to nowhere. Curled-up posters of the elderlywith your disease, so happily the mere picture of livingwith a single peppy foot inside the grave. They’re saying the secret of…
by Kashawn Taylor In this big housealone in my own room I hear from downstairs fourteen strange men loafed on couches enraptured by guys in tights running back and forth across a manicured field on this day of Thanks hooting laughing shooting the shit It could be worse Shit, it has been worse much much worse than babysitters in an office under…
by Julian Gallo She has the right hairstyle, the right eyeglasses, and the right clothes—everything carefully crafted to solidify her place in the bohemian world in which she desperately wants to belong. She holds court at the table at the back of the café, surrounded by mostly male admirers, all…
by Jarek Jarvis I am coming to terms with the cosmichorrors of everyday reality. Catastrophespropagate around me. Even if I ignorethe peripheries, I know that formillennia you have hidden your facebehind the sun. Despite light pollution,I scan the muddy horizon in anticipationof your eventual reemergence. Sure,some Mayan mathematician may haveforgotten…
by Jeffrey Kingman I’m dissolving into a girl on a pier on a lake. I thought you might see yourself that way my washy pastels. If there is a pier and a lakeyou might come along as a pair of eyes a singularity and all you can do is remember…